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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 23, 2000

OTTAWA - The President of the Canadian Bar Association is disappointed by the lack of commitment from the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Bloc québécois to the current crisis in legal aid funding.

"With only days to go until the federal election, none of these parties is showing the attention, leadership and vision necessary to make meaningful improvements in the funding and delivery of legal aid in Canada," says CBA President Daphne Dumont, Q.C., of Charlottetown. "The election campaign offered the perfect opportunity for the parties to speak out in favour of improving access to justice for all Canadians."

Three of the five political parties have outlined their positions on the crisis in legal aid funding in response to a letter sent by the CBA President on Nov. 7. "The Alliance acknowledged our letter but did not address the issue, and there's been no response at all from the P.C.s," she notes.

The CBA's letter challenges governments to improve funding and delivery of legal aid in Canada. "The legal aid system is in crisis because of government cutbacks over the last decade. Rather than getting rich from legal aid cases, committed lawyers actually subsidize the system because they believe in access to justice," says the CBA letter.

To date, the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Bloc québécois have responded. The NDP and the Bloc both criticize the federal government for neglecting its responsibility to properly fund legal aid but do not spell out a clear plan for solving the crisis in funding and delivery of legal aid.

The Liberals' response states the party's "commitment to finding an effective short-term solution, while also working toward agreement on a longer-term solution." The response also notes that legal aid access is a shared federal/provincial/territorial responsibility and points out that in September 2000, the federal Minister of Justice "took a leadership role in bringing all ministers to agreement on the need to collaborate on studying the criminal legal aid system to determine the long-term funding needs for criminal legal aid services across Canada."

Sent to the leaders of the five major political parties, the letter is part of the CBA's ongoing strategy to draw attention to the growing legal aid crisis in Canada. In August, the CBA launched its Legal Aid Watch (LAW), a grassroots network of lawyers across the country who have volunteered to monitor the delivery of legal aid to show how legal aid underfunding hurts real people. The first "horror" story was released on Oct. 28 and is available on the CBA website, www.cba.org.

The Canadian Bar Association is dedicated to improvement in the law and the administration of justice. Some 37,000 lawyers, notaries, law teachers, and law students from across Canada are members.

CONTACT: Hannah Bernstein, Canadian Bar Association, 500 - 865 Carling Ave. , Ottawa, ON, K1S 5S8 Tel: (613) 237-2925, ext. 146; E-mail: hannahb@cba.org